until the devil's turned to dust
by Sandrine Shaw
Summary: With the Nemeton restored to its old powers, Allison tries to prepare herself for the next supernatural crisis and, lacking alternatives, goes to Deucalion for help. There's no telling how far she can trust him, but when violent nightmares start haunting her, she realizes that the question she should be asking herself is whether or not she can trust herself.
1. Chapter 1

**until the devil's turned to dust**  
by Sandrine Shaw

**Chapter 1**

The sky is clear and dark when they finally manage to crawl out of what used to be the root cellar and is now nothing but a crumbled, caved-in hole in the ground next to a tree stump. Dirty and bruised and tired, Allison can't quite believe yet that they all survived the night. She remembers clinging to Isaac after her dad had been taken, remembers thinking that they were all going to die tonight. Was that really just a day ago? It feels like weeks already. Long, sleepless, painful weeks.

Scott looks at her like he thinks she might fall over, and she can only guess what she must look like. Like someone who let herself be drowned and almost didn't make it back, who was almost buried alive, who almost lost her last remaining family and her friends. There's a lot of _almost_ there, a lot of narrow escapes. But _almost_ means that she's still standing, and after a day like today, she counts that as a victory.

"Are you okay?" Scott asks, leaving his mother's side for the first time since he arrived after the fight with Ms Blake. He gave them a brief summary of how it all went down, but Allison didn't really keep up with the fast-shifting alliances. The gist of it was that Scott and Derek were okay, that Ms Blake was dead and Scott didn't think Deucalion and his pack were an active threat at the moment. It's enough for now. Allison will want to know more later, when she's had a shower and a good night's sleep, when she's made sure that her father and Lydia and everyone else she cares about are safe. For now, she doesn't need any details.

She offers Scott a tired smile and a shrug. "Sure."

"I really don't like small spaces." Isaac's voice comes from right next to her, making Allison jump a little. She hadn't realized that he was so close, or that Scott's question was apparently meant for the both of them, and she figures she must be even more tired than she thought.

Her hand finds Isaac's and she gently squeezes his palm, offering a reassuring smile.

Allison's dad offers to drive them home, but she knows he wants to have a word with the Sheriff sooner rather than later, and it's not like she can't get back by herself. The danger is over – for now, at least, and maybe they're lucky enough to catch more than a few days break before the next supernatural crisis hits them. Deaton's comment about the Nemeton turning the town into a beacon attracting all sorts of creatures sounded ominous, just like his warning of what their sacrifice would do to them. It didn't matter then; it was something that had to be done, potential consequences notwithstanding. Now, though, with immediate peril averted, the consequences seem infinitely more real and scary than they did yesterday.

Allison ends up giving the boys and Scott's mom a lift and drops them all off back at the McCall house. Isaac lingers for a moment while Scott quietly slips inside after his mom with a little wave goodbye.

"Are you sure you're gonna be okay on your own?" he asks, and Allison's heart tightens as if someone closed a fist around it and started squeezing. There is a sudden vivid surge of memory from when she buried two daggers in his back, the way his flesh gave, the rush of blood.

_I don't deserve his concern_, she thinks. The smile she puts on makes her face ache with falseness. "Oh, don't worry, my dad won't be long. I just want to fall into bed and sleep for a week."

Scott would realize that she's lying, but Isaac hasn't known her long enough to be familiar with her tells yet, nor is he quite comfortable enough with his heightened werewolf senses to read her heartbeat. If he notices that something's amiss, he'll put it down to the scare the last twenty-four hours (though, really, more like the past seven months) gave them or her tiredness, and she's grateful for that.

* * *

She parks the car in the underground garage. The pale neon lights flicker on and off like in a bad horror movie, and Allison remembers Lydia telling her – months ago, before werewolves and kanimas and dark druids and human sacrifices, when they were shopping in the huge mall over in Concord – that parking garages scared her. Allison laughed it off, calling her a scaredy-cat, and Lydia had pursed her lips and gave Allison a disapproving look, informing her that 8.9% of all rapes and assaults happened in car parks.

It's such a disjointed memory, Allison isn't even sure where it came from. She distantly wonders if, knowing what they know now, having survived creatures much harder to fend off than regular humans, Lydia is still afraid of walking through a parking lot alone.

The lights still flicker when Allison steps into the elevator and presses the button for the sixth floor. When the doors shut, she closes her eyes and leans against the back wall, overwhelmed by weariness now that it's only a few minutes until she can lock the door behind her, catch a long hot shower and a couple of hours of sleep when she doesn't have to worry about her friends or her dad being dead when she wakes up.

Instead of going straight up to her floor without interruption, like she expected at this hour, the elevator stops too soon. Allison straightens herself, her eyes flying open just in time to see the doors sliding apart.

Deucalion steps forward. He pauses for a moment when he sees her (he _sees_ her – Allison dimly recalls Scott telling her about Ms Blake healing Deucalion before he killed her, but it didn't fully register until now his eyes rest on Allison) before he continues walking inside, offering a stiff little nod.

Unconsciously, without thinking about what she's doing, Allison takes a step further into the other corner of the small cubicle, away from him.

If he registers what she's doing – and she's sure he does – he doesn't let on, calmly approaching the console and pressing the button for the penthouse.

They wait for the elevator to resume its journey upwards.A long, tense moment stretches uncomfortably between them until the silence is shattered by someone hollering outside, sudden enough to make Allison jump, her hand instinctively reaching for the dagger hidden at her waist.

There's no attack, no fanged creature jumping out from the dark. Instead, the teenage girl from 7B stumbles into sight, dragging her boyfriend after her. They're giggling and grabbing at each other, frantically making out, drunk or high or both and completely oblivious to the world around them, not noticing or caring that there are two other people in the elevator with them.

The scene is almost surreal, or maybe it just seems that way to Allison. It's hard to reconcile what happened today with the fact that there are normal people out there, living normal lives untouched by all the death and horrors.

Deucalion's watching them, and Allison, in turn, finds herself watching him.

He looks so dramatically different from when she saw him a few hours ago, he barely seems to be the same person. His shirt is torn and bloody, and he looks oddly lost and vulnerable without his ever-present cane and sunglasses, the effortless, intimidating confidence wiped away. Allison now regrets not paying more attention to Scott's run-down of what happened, not asking for more details.

She barely notices when the elevator grinds to a halt, but suddenly Deucalion turns towards her. All that sharp focus directed at her now, it's almost frightening in its intensity.

"This is your stop, I think," he says. The sound of his voice, faintly amused, his accent curling around the vowels, makes her snap out of it.

She blinks and tries to clear her head, catching sight of the illuminated "6" on the panel. "Yeah, it is. Thanks," she replies before she can make herself stop, years and years of practiced politeness when interacting with neighbors getting the better of her even though she meant to ignore him.

When she hurriedly steps out of the elevator, his gaze burning into her back, she tells herself that it wasn't much of a slip. Deucalion's been nothing but immaculately polite since he moved in, even when he was trying to kill her friends; returning the favor doesn't mean anything.

* * *

There's only so much that her father can teach her. It makes sense that she goes to Scott to help out because even if they've broken up, he's still her friend and he considers her part of his pack – a sentiment that flatters her as much as it makes her uncomfortable – so of course he's the first person (_werewolf_) she'd turn to. It's easy to tell that her father doesn't like the idea of his daughter going off to spar with a wolf, but he understands that it's necessary.

They work on her offense first. Allison feels a warm glow of satisfaction about the progress she's making, which is enough to gloss over the awkward moments that arise when she's play-fighting with Scott (his body underneath hers, achingly familiar and reacting to the position in a way that an attacker probably, hopefully, wouldn't; moments when they're locked fighting face to face and they're suddenly too close to each other and his eyes drop to her lips and she just knows that he's thinking about kissing her).

"We should switch around," Allison tells him one day. "You should be the one attacking me. If something's going after us, I have to know how to defend myself."

It doesn't go well.

While Scott seems to be perfectly fine blocking her blows and kicks and being a target for her arrows, he's evidently uncomfortable with actually fighting her. His attacks are half-hearted at best; he pulls his punches and goes easy on her when she wants him challenge her.

"Come on." She pokes him with her toes after he let her throw him to the floor with less effort than it used to take her to bring down her father. If her kick is a little harder than strictly necessary, well, it's his own fault. It's frustrating that even now, he doesn't seem to think she can handle it if he pushes her harder. "You can do better than that."

Scott's face scrunches up. "Allison. I can't."

"You and I both know that you can. I've seen you fight, Scott. I'm not made of glass. I'm not going to break if you actually hit a little bit harder."

Sitting up, he sighs and rubs the back of his neck, refusing to meet her eyes. "I can't hit you. Not really. What kind of boyfriend would that make me?"

Allison freezes, hating how her heart is suddenly beating a little faster. Hating that he can hear it. She needs the feeling to go away, so she says the most matter of fact thing she can think of. "Ex-boyfriend, not boyfriend."

It's only when the words are out that she realizes with a rush of skin-prickling guilt how cruel they sound.

Scott doesn't look surprised, though, just more determined. He looks up at her. "That doesn't make it better. It makes it worse, actually. I know it's just training, but I can't be the kind of guy who hits his ex-girlfriend."

It's almost sweet, and it's so _Scott_, she feels a wave of affection for him. Just not quite enough to drown out the frustration. "How am I supposed to get better at fighting if you won't _fight_ me?"

"Sorry," he says, sounding honestly apologetic. A small grin stretches his lips. "You can still use me for target practice, though."

In light of what he just said about not wanting to fight her, she wonders what it says about her that she actually enjoys firing arrows at him. That she feels a thrill of satisfaction when they hit their target.

* * *

Isaac has a crush on her.

It's hard to miss, the way his eyes linger, the way he always stands a little too close, the way his hands brush hers when he hands her a tray in the cafeteria or they do a chemistry experiment together. He hangs around at school and sometimes comes over to do homework with her. By some miracle, her father doesn't seem to mind. He likes Isaac, which is plainly bizarre, considering how much effort he spent in keeping her and Scott apart. Maybe he's softened towards werewolves his daughter may or may not be dating, after everything they've been through, or maybe he's just resigned himself to the fact that Allison seems to be like catnip for teenage werewolf boys.

Allison enjoys that she doesn't have to sneak around with Isaac. Her dad tells them to leave the door open when they're studying in her room, but he doesn't burst in with a gun in his hand threatening to shoot a round of wolfsbane bullets into Isaac.

For a while, Allison almost doesn't feel guilty for liking Isaac more than she should, being his best friend's (his _Alpha's_) former girlfriend and a werewolf hunter. For a while, she can forget that, because he makes her smile and he keeps looking at her with that expression that makes her blush.

She's almost comfortable enough around him to ask him to train with her.

It's then that she dreams about Kate the first time, about Kate and her hurting Isaac, hunting Isaac, _killing_ Isaac. Kate's smile is mischievous and wicked. _Come on, you know you want to_, she says, sliding the sharp arrow tip down Isaac's naked chest, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

That's not the scary part, though. Allison is used to nightmares. She's dreamed about the Alpha chasing her through the empty hallways of the school, about Matt holding her down and crawling on top of her, about Gerard killing Scott in front of her eyes. And every time she was more scared and powerless in the dream than she'd been in real life for a long time.

But when Kate holds out a knife to her dream self, she sees herself smiling as she takes it, burying it deep in Isaac's chest and watching the life drain from his face as his blood spills all over her fingers.

She wakes abruptly, breathing fast and shakily, and the sticky sensation of blood still clinging to her skin.

She grabs her cell phone to check the time. 4:17. Too early to ring Isaac and ask if he's okay. It's a stupid urge, anyway. Of course he's okay; it was just a dream, nothing actually happened.

But she doesn't find any sleep for the remainder of the night, and when Isaac smiles at her in their early morning math class, she keeps her head down and focuses on the equations until they start to blur in front of her eyes.

* * *

It's weeks after the night of the lunar eclipse until she runs into Deucalion again. She almost thought he'd moved out, skipping town and starting fresh somewhere else the way Derek seems to have done.

She's just back from another fruitless, frustrating training session with Scott, texting Isaac to cancel their tentative plans for homework (she's canceling on him a lot these days, because she can't look at him without remembering what he looks like when she kills him) when she walks into the elevator.

"Hold it, please," someone calls from behind her, and Allison's hand is on the 'open doors' button before she recognizes the voice. It's too late, then. Deucalion steps around the corner into the elevator, balancing a large paper bag with groceries on each of his arms.

It's an odd sight, and her disbelief must be written all over her face because he frowns at her, and even though his tone remains conversational, the set of his jaw betrays his anger. "I know your type thinks that werewolves go into the woods and kill a deer or a couple of cute little bunnies when we're hungry and then we eat them raw, but the truth is, we actually do our grocery shopping like normal people. Shocking as it is, I quite enjoy cooking."

_My type? _she wants to ask, bristling at the idea of being lumped in with the likes of Gerard. At the same time, she knows that this is the reaction he's counting on, that he's intentionally baiting her, and she refuses to give him the satisfaction of rising to it.

She puts on her most pleasant smile, deliberately obviously fake, and tells him, "Maybe you should make a career out of it. You could have your own cooking show, _Kitchen Lessons from the Demon Wolf_. I bet you look great in an apron."

She's aiming for biting sarcasm, but Stiles is the one who excels in that, not her. She realizes that the tone was off as soon as the words are out, and they startle a stifled laugh out of Deucalion that seems to surprise him every bit as much as it does her.

"I shall take that under advisement. If the show takes off, maybe you could join me as my lovely assistant." He says _lovely_ in a way that makes her blush. If there are traces of mockery in his voice, they don't appear to be directed at her, or at least not in a malevolent manner.

She's quick to deflect, steering the conversation back onto familiar territory. "I don't think so. My weapon of choice is the crossbow, but I've been told that my cooking is equally lethal." It's not actually a lie. She's a terrible cook, unlike her dad, who can whip out a flawless three-course dinner as effortlessly as he can assemble a gun.

The corners of Deucalion's mouth twitch into a smile. "I could always teach you," he suggests, just as the elevator reaches her floor.

She laughs it off as she leaves, but his words come back to her later when she's unpacking the weapons that she'd used at Scott's place. Much like training with her dad, sparring with Scott has reached a point where she's treading on the spot. She isn't learning any new tricks from doing the same thing over and over again, shooting arrows and daggers at Scott and hitting him while he half-heartedly defends himself.

Deucalion, she imagines, wouldn't have any qualms about hurting her. And he owes her, he owes them all, after what he and his pack put them through.

She remembers the way he looked at her in the elevator. _I could always teach you._

_Damn right you will_, she thinks.

* * *

"What's going on with you and Isaac?" Scott wants to know, leaning against the lockers while she's trying to find her textbook for French.

It's odd that he seems to be more concerned about Allison distancing herself from Isaac than he used to be when it looked like they were dating. It's what makes him a good friend – Allison knows that, she _likes_ that about him, but it doesn't make his distinct lack of jealousy seem any less weird to her.

She shrugs it off, not keen on discussing how or why she doesn't trust herself around Isaac anymore. "I have a lot of stuff to deal with," she replies lamely.

Scott frowns. "Do you think it's the sacrifice? That darkness Deaton said we would have to live with?"

Sometimes she hates that he's so attuned to her emotions that he can single out her greatest fear without even meaning to. If there's a darkness taking up permanent residence inside of her that's burrowing into her dreams, trying to make her hunt and kill for pleasure, how long will she be able to hold out against it? The mere idea seems ludicrous now. She's not the person in her dream; they have nothing in common except her face and her skills. But what if that's who she'll become, whether she'll want to or not?

"I'm just busy, okay?" she snaps, not caring that Scott is not going to believe her. She slams the locker shut violently, satisfied when it makes him jump a little.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Working up the nerve to ask Deucalion is harder than she thought it would be. She'd hoped for another chance encounter in the elevator, but it's almost been ten days since they exchanged barbed quips over cooking skills, and Allison is growing impatient.

The idea to intentionally seek him out, to knock on his door and ask for his help, is making her uneasy. She chides herself that it shouldn't scare her. If Deucalion hasn't made an active move against any of them since the eclipse, it seems unlikely that he would harm her now; the worst he's going to do is tell her no and send her back home to keep training with Scott.

She has nothing to lose, and yet she feels wrong-footed and awkward, standing at his doorstep.

He opens seconds after she rings the bell, making her wonder if he heard her coming. If he knew that she's been standing outside his door for a while, gathering her thoughts and preparing what she was going to say. Now, of course, all that's gone, her mind blank as a fresh, pristine white sheet of paper.

"I need your help," she blurts, which is not even close to how she'd planned to open this conversation.

Deucalion raises a mocking eyebrow. "You know, when I offered you cooking lessons, I wasn't actually serious."

She makes a face. "I don't want any cooking lessons." She's certain that he knows that, that he doesn't actually believe she's here to learn how to make a perfect soufflé. "Can I come in?"

He steps aside just enough that she can slip past him, but not without brushing against him as she squeezes through. She tries not to begrudge him the cheap intimidation tactic when a hunter has just invited herself into his home.

The apartment is large and spaciously furnished in a way that seems more functional than stylish. Allison wonders if he likes it that way, if he genuinely doesn't care, or if it just used to be convenient when he couldn't see. She isn't sure if the twins still live here or if they're even still in Deucalion's pack; she hasn't seen them in the building. But then, she never ran into them around here before. Maybe they're just sneaky, or maybe they're staying elsewhere. She makes a mental note to ask Lydia if Aidan has stayed over at her place more than he used to.

Deucalion clears his throat, and she guiltily twists around to face him where he's lounging on the couch, his eyes following her every movement. He doesn't offer her a seat. Apparently even his unfailing politeness has its limits. It's just as well; she feels too restless and uncomfortable to sit still.

She's still trying to work out how to phrase her request when he speaks. "Whatever it is you're here for, I'm afraid you could have saved yourself the trouble. I'm not going to get involved in any pack business. The last time I did... well, you were there for the fall-out. The time before that, one of my own tried to kill me to steal my Alpha powers after your grandfather blinded me. I want no part in whatever power struggle is going on now that Scott has risen to his full potential. So if he sent you to ask me to join forces with him, tell him I respectfully decline."

"Why would Scott send me? If he wanted your help, he'd ask you himself. I came for myself. Scott doesn't know I'm here. It's nothing to do with pack business."

"Is that so? I'm intrigued. What kind of help could an Argent possibly want from me?"

This is where she falters. He hasn't exactly been accommodating so far, beyond the fact that he didn't close the door in her face, and asking for help has never been her strongest suit to begin with.

"I'd hoped you could teach me a few things. Fighting, defending myself against a werewolf, stuff like that. I've been training with Scott, but he's not– He's going easy on me, and easy doesn't get me anywhere."

The expression on Deucalion's face is speculative. "Why would I want to do that? To give you the means to become a better hunter and kill my kind more effectively? It seems rather counterproductive to my interests, if you ask me."

"I'm not trying to kill anyone," she snaps. "But if Deaton is right, this town is going to be crawling with supernatural beings soon, and I assume they're not coming here for the sights and the atmosphere of peace and quiet. If it comes to it, I just want to be able to protect the ones who can't protect themselves." She falls back on their new code, but deep down inside, there's a nagging doubt she can't silence. Is it really about protection? What's going to stop her from using the skills she learns to hurt people, if the darkness inside her grows?

Deucalion chuckles. "Ah, the idealism of youth! I'd warn you that it's not going to last long when faced with the cruel reality of human and not-so-human nature, but you don't strike me as the type who heeds warnings." He rests his chin on top of his folded hands, idly appraising her. When she starts squirming under the heaviness of his stare, his lips twitch. "So... why not? I must confess that it does get a little boring sitting around playing house. Some good-natured fighting in the interest of improving your skills could be quite the entertainment."

She wonders if he deliberately gives his words the air of an insult so she'll storm off in a huff and back out. If so, he's in for a disappointment. She's planning on seeing this through, no matter how nasty he gets. "Okay. When are we going to start?"

"Well, no time like the present, is there?" When he stands and approaches her, she has to force herself not to back off. His smile stretches. "Unless you're not ready yet?"

"I didn't bring any weapons." She usually keeps a couple of daggers on her at all times when she can get away with it – which is pretty much anywhere except at school, because as much as she wants to keep safe, she also doesn't want to be suspended. She deliberately left them at home when she came here today, though, needing him to know that it wasn't a hostile visit. In hindsight, it seems risky and foolish.

"Yes, I can see that being a problem." His voice rankly drips sarcasm. "Imagine if I were a dangerous predator about to maul you. I'm sure if you asked nicely to let you go back home to get your crossbow first, I would put off killing any innocents until you're sufficiently armed and prepared for battle."

Allison flushes, feeling stupid. She knows he's right, but hand-to-hand combat with someone who so obviously physically outmatches her is only ever going to end one way. She remembers that she could barely hold her own against Scott without her weapons, and Deucalion is taller, stronger, and more experienced. For the first time, she wonders if this wasn't a terrible idea. What if he's not as reformed as Scott thinks he is? If he did want revenge against her family, she just handed him herself on a silver platter.

As if sensing her fear, he laughs softly. "Do I need to remind you that you were the one who came to me, asking for this?"

It's the taunting edge of his voice that makes her attack.

She goes for the usual vulnerable spots: his groin, his throat, his solar plexus. Her sense of self-preservation tells her not to go for his eyes unless she's feeling suicidal. It doesn't matter anyway – he blocks all of her punches and her kicks before she can even carry them through, and the one time she manages to score a hit that would have sent a human to his knees, he recovers within seconds, too quick for her to follow through.

He tries to kick her legs out from underneath her, but she successfully evades him and ducks away, her spirits lifting at what feels like a momentary advantage.

The next thing she knows, she's flat on her stomach on the floor, the force of the impact leaving her gasping for air as his hand at her neck holds her down. When she tries to kick back up, she feels his nails sharpen into claws, razor-edged against the vulnerable skin.

He effortlessly holds her down like that, with just one hand, until whatever fight was left in her has drained from her body. She lets her forehead drop to the floor and closes her eyes, the humiliation burning behind her eyelids like grains of sand.

Deucalion barely even sounds like he's out of breath. "Lesson one – and this is one your father or Scott really should have taught you already – when you're facing down an opponent you know you can't win against, don't try to fight to win. Fight to stall. It might buy you just enough time for reinforcements to arrive, or to find something you can use as a weapon after all."

"Let me up," she says, tightly, choking on the way the embarrassment mingles with fear, her heart racing frantically in her chest. What is she going to do if he won't? What _can_ she do?

But the pressure from her neck is gone before she can start to panic, and when she sits back on her knees, he's offering her the same hand that was just holding her down to pull her to her feet. She wants to ignore it, but the way her entire body aches makes her swallow her pride, and his callused, large hand closing around hers is firm and strong and oddly reassuring.

He lets go when she's back on her feet.

"Come back tomorrow afternoon. Bring your weapons."

* * *

Their second practice session goes better.

She feels more comfortable with the daggers in her belt, safer with the arrows on her back, so much less vulnerable when she knows she has her crossbow to compensate for some of his obvious physical advantage.

"Come on," she goads him breathlessly, and his eyes glow angry red when he lunges for her, giving her what Scott refused to give her when they were sparring: a proper challenge

They both spill blood that day. She fires an arrow into his left shoulder that he isn't quick enough to evade. His claws slice the back of her tank top, leaving five deep scratches in their wake. One of her daggers – the same one she used on Isaac, what feels like half an eternity ago – gets buried deep in his side, making him temporarily stagger.

In the end, he still wins the fight, sending her crashing into a wall with enough force to make her dizzy, but she gets a couple of good hits in before it's over, and she feels more alive and brimming with raw energy and adrenaline rush than she has in months. She smiles around the coppery taste in her mouth.

With a barely noticeable wince, Deucalion pulls the broken arrow tip from his shoulder, and the skin starts knitting itself together almost immediately. His eyes are blue and human once again.

"Not bad," he says.

The odd sense of gratification she gets from his praise evaporates when he narrows his eyes at her, his nostrils flaring like he caught a bad scent. "Turn around."

"What? No. Why?" Every instinct inside of her bristles both at the authority in his voice as well as the idea to turn her back to him. She steels herself for an argument that never comes. Instead, he grabs her arm and spins her around, manhandling her so that she's pressed with her front against the wall. It happens too quick for her to react, and when she finally does try to dislodge his grip, he growls at her.

"I'm checking if the wounds were deep enough that there was a risk it would turn you. I thought that might be a concern of yours."

His words make her freeze up at once. She can feel her heartbeat all the way up to her throat. How could she not even have thought about that? Just the idea alone brings her to the edge of panic. Perhaps it's a trick of mind, but the gashes on her back have suddenly started aching more than they did just a second ago.

"I'd... prefer it if that didn't happen," she says carefully. It's the understatement of the century but it's obvious that he's not in the least fooled by her nonchalance.

"That's what I thought." A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. "Don't worry, you'll be fine. You might want to put something on those to avoid infection, though."

He steps away, and Allison releases the breath she's been holding.

* * *

Her father eyes the blooming bruises on her upper arm, purple and distinctly finger-shaped, with disapproval, and she resigns herself to the lecture that she knows is coming before he even speaks.

"Look, Allison, I know that you have to train, and I trust that you and Scott are perfectly capable of making a judgment call on how far you take your fight practice. But you've got to be careful. People are going to see those bruises and they're going to jump to conclusions."

She smiles a little too sharply. "I don't really care what people think."

Her father sighs. "I'm just saying... they're not going to see a hunter preparing for battle, they'll see what is likely a victim of domestic abuse, and it's bound to draw unwanted attention we don't need right now, especially after the mess with the FBI." He holds up a placating hand. "I'm not telling you to stop. Just... be careful about who sees those bruises, okay?"

Allison nods. Truth is, she hadn't even stopped to consider that, and she should have. Scott clearly had, and suddenly his reluctance to attack her seemed a lot less silly and unfounded.

Her hands skim over the marks, remembering Deucalion's fingers, human and clawless, digging into her skin the day before. She doesn't correct her dad in his assumption that she's still training with Scott.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

She goes to Deucalion twice a week, giving her bruises and cuts some time to heal in between their sparring sessions. The injuries he leaves are never serious – he doesn't break any bones or leave any wounds that take more than a few days to mend – but he never offers to take her pain away either, afterwards.

When they fight, it's only ever his eyes and his nails that change. Allison is always tempted to ask him to wolf out, but he's enough for her to handle in his human form, and from what Scott has told her about the fight with the Darach, she's not even sure if she really wants to see Deucalion's Alpha form, no matter how curious she may be.

They don't talk, exactly, not beyond the banter they trade. But the jibes they exchange have lost some of their sharpness and are now more like a comfortable habit they keep falling back into.

Allison goes straight home when they've finished, treats her wounds and cleans herself up down at her own place in private, before her father comes home. If the bruises made him uncomfortable, she doesn't want to find out how he'd react if he saw some of the other injuries she's returning with. He'd probably confront Scott, and Scott would tell him that they stopped training together weeks ago, and that's a situation Allison would prefer to avoid for as long as possible.

* * *

They lose track of time one day.

It's a gloomy Tuesday in January, and Allison was running late to begin with because Mr Wincott, their new English teacher who was probably not a dark druid but just a regular human jerk, had given her detention for arguing with Isaac.

She doesn't make it to Deucalion's until an hour after their usual time, and even though he never goes easy on her, she gets the impression that he's particularly challenging that day, throwing her around like a rag doll and hardly giving her the chance to score. If he'd handled her like this two months ago, she would have quit after the first day. But over the course of those weeks she's been fighting with him, she's picked up skills and tricks she wouldn't have known then, and when he grabs her by her throat and slams her up the wall, she sees an opening and draws her dagger to his neck where his carotid pulsates, placing the pointed tip against it.

The choke-hold around her throat eases and he sets her down surprisingly gently rather than unceremoniously dropping her to the floor.

Sliding a single claw into the space between her blade and his skin, he pointedly pulls the dagger from the vulnerable spot.

She chuckles. "Scared?"

"It takes more than a small knife to scare me, Allison," he admonishes, amused. "But it was still a good move. Thanks for not seeing it through. It's always a pain to get those bloodstains off the walls."

Allison snorts. "I figured I owe you for not actually crushing my windpipe there." She pulls her sweaty hair back from her face and starts gathering her weapons. "I should get going. My dad's back at five and I want to be home before him."

"That might prove to be a little difficult. It's almost six."

"What? How did we– _Shit_!" If she comes back home now like this, her father is bound to ask questions, and even though she's reluctant to tell him the truth, she'd hoped to avoid outright lying to him. She swears under her breath, wondering if she could talk Lydia into covering for her without actually telling her what she's been up to.

"You're welcome to use the shower here and clean yourself up before you return to your father," Deucalion offers, and Allison gratefully accepts.

She winces when she looks at herself in the bathroom mirror and sees the ring of dark red bruises around her throat. There's nothing she can do about those now, but even if she had been home earlier, she wouldn't have been able to cover them up from her father. She'll have to wear scarves at school for the next week or so; maybe get some make-up tips from Lydia.

The hot spray of water makes her body ache, makes her feel each bruise and each sore muscle and joint more acutely. She normally enjoys that part, loves the way her body feels after a good workout. In the privacy of her home, she revels in spending luxurious long minutes under the shower, tilting up her face into the spray and letting the water wash over her like warm summer rain.

Here, standing naked in the bathroom of a man she doesn't quite trust, who's been an enemy until far too recently, she's unable to relax like that. She keeps the shower short and perfunctory, turning the water off as soon as she feels clean.

There are fresh towels on the rack, white and fluffy, like the ones they give you in hotels, and not for the first time, Allison wonders if the entire interior maybe came with the apartment because everything is so impersonal and exchangeable.

She dries herself off and wraps a towel around her body, twisting her wet hair up in a loose bun. The state of her clothes makes her frown. Would it be tasteless to ask if he still has anything of Kali's that she could wear? She doesn't know how close they were, if he mourns her death or regrets the way his pack seems to have fallen apart after the final showdown with the Darach. She decides just to ask for a shirt or something; it's not like her dad has a keen sense of fashion.

Deucalion is in the kitchen when she comes out of the bathroom, leaning against the counter and sipping from a bottle of water. He's still in his training gear, bloodstains on his grey tank top, and Allison feels a little guilty for monopolizing his shower, even though he offered.

"Do you think I could borrow–" She stops at the way he's staring at her, too intense, too focused, too _hungry_, like he's about to jump and tear out her throat, and she's not sure what she's done to provoke that. "What?"

He blinks and draws in a sharp breath, but his eyes continue roaming restlessly over her body. His voice, when he speaks, is oddly formal and controlled. "I apologize. It's been a long time since I've seen a woman."

"Oh." Allison's heart rate spikes. She feels a blush rising on her cheeks. Part of her wants to turn back to the bathroom and cover herself. She didn't think anything of it, but in hindsight it seems inappropriate to stand clad only in a towel in the middle of a man's living room, especially someone who's been deprived of his sight for so long. At the same time, however, the way his eyes linger on her makes her feel reckless and powerful, like she has some sort of hold over this dangerous predator who used to call himself the Alpha of Alphas, and it's a rush like no other.

She bites her lip and, trying not to examine too closely what she's about to do, with damp fingers she worries the edge of the towel until it comes loose.

The towel falls and crumples at her feet, leaving her fully exposed. Deucalion's eyes flash red for an instant. It takes all her courage to resist the urge to raise her arms and shield her nakedness from him.

"Don't start anything you don't intend to finish, Allison," he warns. His tone is mild, but there's an edge underneath that makes her realize that she's testing his patience to breaking point.

"Who says that I'm not going to finish it?" It's a challenge, not unlike earlier when she came at him with a pair of daggers, and just like then the knowledge that he's going to retaliate is at equal parts scary and thrilling.

His gaze flickers up and down her body, drinking her in like a man who'll die of thirst unless he has his fill. The way he looks at her makes arousal pool in her stomach like liquid heat. She never thought of him like that before, never allowed herself to look at him and see the man – not a monster to be fought, not a potential threat, not a reluctant ally. Now, suddenly, all she can see is a man who wants her, someone she can have without feeling guilty, someone she doesn't have to be afraid of hurting.

It's her who closes the distance between them, stepping over the discarded towel and approaching him. He sets the bottle down on the counter behind him and reaches for her, and Allison's breath stutters. His hands, which she's come to associate with violence and danger and bruises over the last couple of months, are achingly gentle on her flushed skin, his touch soft and almost reverent as he maps out her body, raising goosebumps in its wake.

A shiver runs through her, head to toe. He smiles at her reaction, clearly pleased with himself, and she'd begrudge him his smug attitude if he didn't choose just this moment to let his hand dip between her legs, the calluses on his fingertips dragging deliciously against her clit before he slides a single finger inside her. She's so wet, there's barely even any resistance at all at the breach; no burn, no lingering discomfort warring against the pleasure.

It draws a gasp from her lips, and he swallows it with his mouth on hers. The kiss is hard and relentless, a stark contrast to the tenderness of his touch, different from Scott's wet, hungry kisses or the shy, clumsy ones she exchanged with the boys who came before him. Deucalion touches her like he wants to worship her, like he's asking for permission, but he kisses her like he _owns_ her, with a possessiveness that should worry her but his fingers are driving her insane and she can't think, can barely keep on her feet.

Her knees buckle when she comes with a quiet little scream, and he catches her and hoists her up easily with large, warm hands that span across her thighs and her ass as she wraps her legs around his waist. She gasps when the soft cotton of his shirt rubs against her clit, too soon after her orgasm, the overstimulation almost painful.

If it were Scott, she'd make a funny little quip like, _You're overdressed_, but sex with Scott always had a playful edge that she can't imagine with Deucalion, so she doesn't say anything, just pulls at his shirt until the hem slips free so she can drag it over his head. He walks her backwards and sets her down on top of the table, the wood smooth beneath her and quickly warming against her skin.

She reaches eagerly for the fastening of his pants, wanting to feel him inside of her so badly that she's shaking. His cock is thick and half-hard already when he finally steps out of his pants and shorts. She closes her fingers around the shaft and gives it a few firm strokes, pleased when she gets to watch him lose his unaffected air of cool and his face twists into a snarl, a feral groan ripped from his throat.

Allison loves that part, when she's the one to make them lose it like that – loved it with Scott, and loves it even more with Deucalion, who surely has a better handle on his control than a newly-turned teenage wolf and yet still can't hold on to it when she puts her hands on him. She smiles and trails her nose along his jawline, then fastens her teeth against his throat and bites down.

His reaction is instantaneous, his entire body jerking against her as if she'd tasered him. In a flash, her upper body is flat with her back on the table. The hand that pushed her down has sharp claws that have cut into her more than once in the past but now curve around her side without cutting the skin even a little, and _fuck_, that's hot! The fresh stab of arousal makes her insides clench and her head feel light and woozy.

"Come on," she gasps harshly. "Fuck me already."

"Such language," he chides mildly. His smile is fanged and predatory, but his voice is as unruffled as ever, and it's not fair that he can still taunt her like this when she can barely string two coherent words together. "Your wish is, as ever, my command."

It doesn't sound like he's done toying with her. She expects him to draw it out and make her wait, so she's unprepared when he ruthlessly slams into her, burying himself to the hilt inside her with a force that makes her back chafe against the table top. A broken scream tumbles from her lips and her hands futilely fumble for something to hold on to when he leans over her, bracketing her face with his forearms while his claws dig holes into the soft wood, and he starts fucking her ruthlessly with long, powerful thrusts that drive the air from her lungs.

Her second orgasm ripples through her, pleasure so sharp that it's almost painful, and when she tightens around him, his thrusts speed up and break their rhythm. Bonelessly, she lies back and catches her breath, losing track of time until he finishes, burying his head in the crook of her neck and dragging his fangs over her pulse point without breaking the skin. She feels his cock jerking inside of her, the hot rush of his come filling her, marking her from the inside.

It doesn't take him long to recover, and he pulls himself up and steps away, an unpleasantly cool rush of air wrapping itself around her body when he's gone. She doesn't want to move just yet, too tired and blissed-out to care about the goosebumps rising on her skin and the way the table starts feeling hard and uncomfortable.

He's already dressed, looking her up and down, with something she initially mistakes for hunger.

"My, my, my, Allison Argent." Something in the way he says her name makes her uneasy, but it isn't until he continues that she understands the scope of it. "I wonder what your grandfather would say if he saw you like that."

The warmth of the afterglow dissipates at once. It feels like someone had dunked her in ice water, the chill seeping into every pore of her body and taking her breath away. She wants to scream. She wants to curl into a ball and cry, but she won't. She's not going to give him that.

"I imagine he'd come after you with a pair of arrows," she says coldly, letting the implications sink in.

She doesn't wait for him to react, pushing herself off the table and hurrying out of the room. Her work-out clothes lie in a heap on the bathroom floor. She grabs them and puts them on quickly, not caring anymore if her father will question her whereabouts. It won't matter, anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4 **

She forgot her weapons at Deucalion's place. In her rush to get away from him, she left her bag, and while those are not her only daggers and she can explain the loss of a crossbow and a handful of arrows away if she needs to, it feels wrong to leave perfectly good weapons behind just because she is too weak to face the bad choices she's made.

That's the only reason she returns. She has no intention of staying, doesn't care to resume their sparring practice after what happened, but Deucalion acts like nothing has changed at all and when he tells her to get started, she sees red.

She comes at him with everything she has, all her rage channelled into her attack, and it's not neat, it's not smart, it's not refined, but it feels good to let it all out, just lash out over and over again with hands and fists and blades and arrows, and she wishes she had wolfsbane here that she could ram down his throat and into every little wound she leaves on him.

But they're just that, shallow little wounds that heal almost instantly, her attacks uncoordinated and ineffective. She doesn't care. It's not about winning; she can't win against him anyway, she just wants the release.

Ironically, it's Deucalion who becomes visibly frustrated with her unskillful attempts, the frown on his face getting deeper as he continues blocking her blows with ease. "Concentrate. You're letting your anger get in the way of your tactics."

She doesn't bother to reply, just continues ineffectively chipping away at his defense, trying to ignore the way her limbs are growing tired and heavy.

"Allison, stop it," he says sternly, and his fucking calm is grating on her nerves like claws dragged over a blackboard. "There's no point. You're too angry."

She lands a solid kick at his ribcage that does nothing to him but fucks with her momentum and almost makes her lose her balance. "Of course I'm angry! You fucking used me to get revenge on my family, and I was too stupid to realize what you were doing."

He trips her. When she goes down, he's on her at once, his body stretching out on top of hers, immobilizing her with his weight pressing her down and his hands locking her wrists in place, and this is not sparring anymore, this is –

"Let me go," she hisses, trying to gain enough leverage to kick him, but the way he restrains her is relentless.

"Will you listen to me?" He uses his sensible voice, the one that implies that he's so much smarter than anyone else and ten steps ahead, and it's aggravating her even more, so she just keeps struggling against his hold, her lips pressed into a hard, angry line. "Stop being stupid. If I wanted to use you to get revenge against your family, I would tear you apart limb from limb and spread the body parts at your father's and your grandfather's doorstep."

The violent mental image his words evoke makes her double her efforts to get free, fear ratcheting up her heartbeat. All it does is make him sigh in evident frustration.

"What I'm trying to tell you – apparently not very successfully – is that I didn't have sex with you for the purpose of using it against you or your family. That wasn't what it was about, and I have no intention of doing that to you."

She stills, breathing hard. She can't find a trace of mockery on his face, and he sounded sincere enough, but after what happened, she has resigned herself to the fact that she can't read him for shit. "Then why did you say that? Why would you bring up Gerard after we'd–"

She can't even say it.

A flurry of emotions flickers on Deucalion's expression, gone too fast to be distinguishable. Her hands are suddenly free, his weight lifted from her as he rolls off, coming to rest lying on his back beside her. Part of her still wants to take one of her daggers and bury it in his heart. Instead, she lies next to him, both of them unmoving and quiet, the silence stretching until she's almost sure that she's not going to get an answer.

"Remember when I told you that it took more than a knife to scare me?" he asks, at length. "That's what happened. I got scared." His tone is so matter-of-fact that at first she thinks that he's joking until she turns her head to look at him, taking in the hard set of his jaw, the nervous twitch of his clawed fingers, the way he keeps staring at the ceiling.

"Why would you be scared of me? We both know that I wouldn't stand a chance against you, if we were fighting for real," she whispers, watching his face grimace into a humorless smile.

"I've learned the hardest way not to let anyone in. I don't think you understand what I've lost, Allison. My eyesight, my pack, the woman I loved. Every person I ever trusted either betrayed me or died. Well, or both."

"Did she– Was she in your pack, the woman?"

He turns his head towards her. "If you're asking me whether I killed her, the answer is no. I didn't kill her." There's a moment when she thinks he's going to say something else, but then he seems to change his mind, shaking his head. "Don't ask how she died."

It sounds more like a warning than a request, and Allison senses that perhaps the answer might be more painful to her than to him. She doesn't ask.

* * *

Kate keeps showing up in her dreams. That night, though, she's not asking Allison to kill Isaac with her.

She takes Allison's hand and tells her to follow her, and then they're out in the woods. It's cold and dark and there's nothing around them but trees.

_What are we doing out here?_ Allison asks, and Kate smiles that wicked, beautiful smile of hers and bends down to whisper the words in Allison's ear like a secret she isn't supposed to share. _We're going to light a bonfire._

When Allison turns her head, she realizes that they're standing in front of the Hale house.

The smell of burning flesh is still in her nostrils when she wakes up, and the screams still echo in her head, over and over again. The very worst part, though, is that in her dream, she reveled in them.

She's pale and silent the morning after, shrugging off her father's concerned questions, avoiding her friends at school and returning to Deucalion two days earlier than usual, glad when she gets to channel all her fears and the darkness that's choking her up into physical violence.

* * *

They don't talk about it, any of it.

The sessions continue as if nothing had happened at all, and Allison tells herself she's glad. She values their training, and she knows she needs it because the period of grace the Nemeton granted them seems to be over. A dark fairy wreaks havoc on the town until Scott and her dad manage to drive her away, and the encounters with rogue omegas become more and more frequent. There's also the matter of Peter, who keeps hanging around the pack, offering unhelpful advice and observing them a little too intently, like he's just biding his time until he tries something.

They'll soon need all the help they can get, and Allison needs to be the best hunter she can be, even if the thing that scares her the most is still the person she sees herself becoming in her nightmares. Every time she sharpens her skills, she wonders how long it'll be until she turns them against the people she loves.

One afternoon in late February, Deucalion pulls a dark, opaque piece of cloth over her eyes without warning. She immediately reaches up to take it off, but his fingers close around her wrists, stopping her.

"What are you doing?"

Her pulse is going faster, and it's like she can _feel_ the adrenaline pumping through her veins, burning like an electrical current. She dimly wonders if she should fight harder, if she's actually in danger. It doesn't seem like he's trying to harm her, the way he holds her wrists firm but not bruising, but she doesn't like being this vulnerable, doesn't understand what's going on.

"We're going to try something new. The blindfold stays on today."

He lets go of her and steps back. At least she thinks he does. He moves quietly, and it's hard to keep track of his movements when she can't see him. She frowns. "I can't fight like this."

"You're going to learn it," he tells her. His voice is coming from a different direction to where she expected him to be, and she spins towards it. "You can't afford to rely on any single one of your senses. You never know when you're going to lose it."

She swallows, suddenly acutely, uncomfortably aware that he used to be _blind_. That her grandfather blinded him.

"What about my hearing?"

"One thing after the other. First you have to do without your sight. Fine-tune those ears of yours. And then when we're done with that, I'm going to show you how little you can rely on them."

She tries to follow his voice, and yet, by the end of his little speech, he's standing right behind her, words whispered into her ear. She can feel the heat of his body even though he isn't touching her. When Allison startles and jerks away, he chuckles.

"Funny how your trust in me is inversely proportional to your vulnerability."

There's a hint of bitterness to that statement, she thinks, or maybe she's just imagining it. She wants to protest, but the fact of the matter is, he's right, so she keeps silent.

"Tell you what. We're going to start with your offense so you can get used to the blindness first before I actually attack you. Let's call it a trust-building exercise." His tone is mocking, but they both know that he's serious.

"Okay," she says, forcing herself to sound equally nonchalant, but more grateful than she's comfortable admitting.

"Alright then, do your worst."

It's different when you're attacking something, someone you can't see. You know they're out there, you hear them move, but you don't know where exactly they are and what they're doing. She'd been proud of how she's honed her skills in the months since she's been training with him, feeling accomplished. Now, going in blind when facing an enemy, she realizes how foolish that overconfidence was.

She keeps going off in the wrong directions, stumbling into walls, effectively sabotaging herself without Deucalion having to raise a hand against her.

"Let's try this again, shall we?" he suggests, amused.

So she gives it another try, and another, increasingly frustrated when she feels that she isn't improving at all.

After what seems like hours, when she's sure that it's almost time to hurry home, it's Deucalion who calls it to a halt. Allison pulls the blindfold off and carelessly throws it down. A glance at the clock tells her that it's barely been ninety minutes since they started. She feels worn out and defeated, angry at herself for not doing better, angry at him for putting her through this and showing her how painfully ill-equipped she is to handle a situation like this.

When he hands her a glass of water, she takes it, wordlessly nodding her thanks. His gaze on her feels heavy, irritating her because she knows he must see failure when he looks at her, and she hates it, hates being this weak and inadequate and clumsy.

"Stop beating yourself up over it," he says, as if he could read her mind. "You'll get better with time."

"Good. Because I don't think I could possibly get any _worse_."

His mouth twitches into a smile. "Well, you haven't stabbed yourself with those daggers. I'm counting that as a win."

Allison doesn't even think about it. She instinctively grabs the dagger at her side and throws it at him. As expected, he catches it mid-air, his fingers closing around the blade. Blood drips from his fist onto the pristine floor. Deucalion raises an eyebrow at her, letting go of the bloodied dagger and bending down to pick up the discarded blindfold. "I'm going to take this as assent to start again," he says, stepping closer.

This time, when he ties the blindfold around her head, she lets him, forcing her pulse to quieten as she focuses on the senses she has left instead. The sound of his breathing, the faint hint of aftershave and fresh, clean sweat, the warmth radiating off him, triggering sense memories in her that she tries to shove away, willing herself not to be distracted.

She lifts her head up to him and smiles. "Alright. Let's go again."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5 **

She still hasn't told anyone about the dreams and her fears of what they mean, how the darkness inside her is growing and there's nothing she can do about it.

Meanwhile, she's sure they've all come up with their own explanations for why Allison has distanced herself from Isaac. Lydia is the only one who confronts her about it, though.

"You need to talk to him," she says, sliding next to her at the lunch table. "Look, I know how it is. You sleep with a boy and then you regret it and it gets all awkward. But speaking as someone who has considerable experience with this, let me tell you, ignoring the issue doesn't help. You have to sit him down and talk about it like the reasonable, adult people – or, well, not-people in his case, I guess – that you are."

Allison feels herself freeze up. "What? Who are you talking about?"

"Isaac, of course." Lydia rolls her eyes and snaps her fingers in front of Allison's face. "Pay attention. Unless there are any other werewolf boys you had sex with and are now steadfastly ignoring, despite the sad puppy-dog looks they continue to send you while sitting behind you in chemistry."

Relief hits Allison like a tidal wave, and she laughs. "I didn't sleep with Isaac!" Her voice may have been a bit louder than she intended, because the heads of everyone sitting on the tables around them snap towards her. Allison blushes and ducks her head, but not before she saw Scott and Isaac staring at her from the other end of the room.

Lydia fixes her with a skeptical look. "Are you sure?"

"Yep, definitely. I think I'd remember," Allison says, a little snappier than necessary, because despite the confusion about the nature of her relationship with Isaac, Lydia wasn't entirely wrong.

* * *

"I didn't regret it."

She says the words as soon as she's stepped into the penthouse because if she doesn't say it right, she might not say it at all.

"Pardon?" Deucalion doesn't seem to understand what she's talking about, or perhaps he's deliberately acting confused. She knows she should take it as a sign not to press, to change the topic and never mention it again, but if she doesn't speak now she'll regret it later and it will only add to her anxiety. It's not like she needs any more things to eat at her, so she'd rather get it over and done with now.

"Having sex with you." She forces herself not to hide behind a euphemism. Not say _sleeping with you_ because that's not what they did, is it? Not letting the crudeness of _fucking you_ become a distraction. "I didn't regret it until you said what you said. And even then, I didn't regret it because I was ashamed or because what my family would say, but because you were being a jerk."

He frowns at her. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because we haven't talked about it, and I think that we should." It feels like this conversation takes more courage than facing him down with a weapon does.

He looks at her with an inscrutable expression, like he's measuring her, like he's staring straight into her mind and judging what he finds there until she's squirming under his scrutiny.

Awkwardly, she hurries to add, "We don't have to, if you don't want to. I just wanted to say it."

"Alright," he says mildly, and this may not be the single most mortifying, excruciatingly embarrassing moment of Allison's life, but it's definitely in the top three.

"Right," she says, about to turn around and get her weapons so they can get started rather than draw this painful non-conversation out for a minute longer. Before she can get anywhere, he stops her by grabbing her arm. She's still wondering _When did he get so close_ when he pulls her in and harshly kisses her, and she finds herself responding before she even has time to think about it.

She wasn't implying that she wanted to have sex again when she brought the topic up. That's not why she wanted to talk about it. _Was it? _She isn't sure of her motives anymore, but she knows that she doesn't really want to stop, so she wraps her arms around his neck and opens her mouth under his, her body melting into him.

He takes her to the bedroom, this time.

He spreads her out on the covers and holds her down while he slides along her body and lowers his head between her legs, putting his mouth to work until she bucks up helplessly against him and screams his name. When Allison is all loose and relaxed from orgasm, he pushes inside of her, fucking her through the aftershocks. His hand is in her hair, pulling her head back, making her bare her throat to him, and his mouth fastens on it with hungry insistence, blunt human teeth pressing marks into her skin.

"I don't regret it either," he says afterwards. "In case you need me to spell it out for you."

Allison laughs quietly. "Yeah, I think I got that."

* * *

Stiles and Lydia are convinced that Peter is going after Scott's Alpha status, that this is why he sent Derek and Cora away, why he's lurking around the pack at any chance he gets.

Allison doesn't mean to discuss it with Deucalion. He made it abundantly clear when she first came to him that he doesn't wish to be involved in pack business, and he's never shown the slightest interest in the on-goings of her and the pack's struggles against whatever creature has been attracted by the Nemeton this week.

But after she spent too many fruitless hours in the Argent library with Lydia and even her dad's knowledge of pack dynamics is exhausted, while Deaton's responses are limited to vague, cryptic warnings, her only remaining sources of information are Gerard and Deucalion. Between them, she figures that she should consider Deucalion more trustworthy, even if she doesn't know where his allegiances lie in the bigger picture. She's been trusting him with her body and her life for a while now; she just isn't quite sure if she can trust him with anyone else's.

She casually brings Peter up after they're done sparring, while Deucalion is occupied trying to remove an arrow tip that has lodged itself into the middle of his back where he has trouble reaching it.

"He wouldn't need to kill Scott to steal his powers," he says, distractedly.

Allison frowns, because that makes no sense at all. Derek became the Alpha after killing Peter, and Deaton told Scott that a beta turning into an Alpha by his own strength of mind was a rare occurrence. "I just don't understand how it works. My family's bestiary is super-vague about how a wolf becomes an Alpha. There's a lot of talk about stealing the power of another Alpha. I kind of assumed that it meant killing them."

"Not necessarily. Killing them would be the most effective way, yes, but sometimes it's enough to beat the other in a fight, though of course that leaves the door wide open for retaliation. And if an Alpha dies without another wolf having a hand in it, their power often falls to another wolf in their pack."

He swears under his breath when the arrow slips from his blood-stained fingers once again, and Allison steps closer. "Here, let me," she tells him softly, and his hand falls away to give her access to the wound.

"I presume the reason your bestiary isn't any more clear is that there are no hard and fast rules," he continues, his voice not wavering when she slowly starts extracting the arrow. She winces when it starts bleeding afresh the more she pulls, the skin around it having already healed and tearing again from her efforts. "Every Alpha and their pack are different. Sometimes, when there's no one in line ready to take on the responsibility, the power dies with the Alpha. Sometimes it's inherited by family. Like when Talia died, her eldest daughter became the Alpha."

"Laura." Allison remembers how, after she found out the whole ugly truth about werewolves and her family's involvement, Scott told her about the body in the woods; that Derek buried what was left of his dead sister next to the burnt house. She used to think it was creepy. Now she just thinks it's sad. "How did you become an Alpha?"

She realizes it might be an insensitive question the moments the words slip out of her mouth, and his reaction proves that it does indeed make him uncomfortable. Standing behind him, she can't see his face, but his back becomes tense under her hands and his fingers twitch in a way that suggests that he's struggling to keep the claws from coming out. She shouldn't have asked, isn't sure if she really wants to hear the answer, some gruesome tale about a life he took. "You don't have to–"

He overrides her in a tone that sounds too conversational and isn't at all in tune with his body language. "Much the same way Laura did, actually. My father was the Alpha, and when he died, his powers fell to me."

Allison knows she shouldn't ask, but at the same time, she can't stop herself. "How did he die?" The question is barely more than a whisper, as if saying it more quietly will soften the blow the answer will doubtlessly deliver.

Deucalion turns, his eyes locking with hers. "Gerard and his brother hunted him down. I don't know which of them killed him, but when they came for me, I bit Alexander. You know how this story ends."

She does, indeed. With a hunter choosing death over becoming the thing he hates. With Gerard going on a vendetta that leaves bloodshed and causes ripple effects even two generations later. An eye for an eye, a life for a life, and Allison is so tired of it all. "Will it ever end? My family, all the pain and the death and the way we turn people into monsters?"

"It ends with you," he says, and the absolute conviction in his tone feels like the arrow tip in her hand has burrowed itself into her heart and is slicing it apart.

Her throat is tight and her voice chokes up when she speaks. "You can't know that! Unless you kill me, you can't possibly know."

Deucalion reaches out and curves his hand around her cheek, his thumb gently brushing her skin. He stands close enough to kiss her, but the touch is more comforting than sexual, and Allison isn't quite sure what to do with it.

"You've been there. You took the path down hatred and violence that your grandfather paved for you, and when you saw what it cost you, you turned back. You made that choice, on your own. That's more strength than I had, when it came to it. I think you should have a little more faith in yourself."

His words are clawing her apart, making her want to tear herself away from him and run. If he knew what she knows, if he could peer inside her and see what she's like, he wouldn't trust her to do the right thing: he would kill her on the spot. His instincts were right the first time around when he was reluctant to let her in, and she feels like an imposter for acting like she's different than her family when she knows deep inside of her that she's not.

"I have to go," she says, pulling away. "My father's home early today, I don't want him to ask any questions."

She feels Deucalion's stare against her back as she hurries off.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6 **

At night, she's too afraid to go to sleep because she knows that the dreams will come back. They always do; variations of the same theme.

She's killed them all dozens of times over – Isaac, Scott, Derek and his family, Lydia, the twins, her father and Stiles and Scott's mum. Kate is standing next to her and egging her on, telling her what a good job she's doing, praising her for becoming such a good hunter, for helping to keep the town safe by killing the monsters and those who stood with them. And the Allison in the dream loves it, loves the thrill of the hunt and pleasure of the kill, soaking the compliments up with a pleased little smile while her weapons are dripping blood.

The dream when she kills Peter is the worst, though.

Because Kate isn't in the dream. There's no one telling Allison to hunt and kill, it's all her, on her own, and she puts a round of wolfsbane bullets in Peter's chest and watches his veins turn black as he writhes in pain on the bloodstained floor before she pours gasoline all over him and sets him on fire.

She wakes with her heart pounding like a battle drum. It's barely three in the morning and she doesn't want to go back to sleep, because the mere idea of another dream like that is almost unbearable.

The apartment is dark, and when she peers inside of her father's bedroom, he's fast asleep. She thinks about waking him, telling him about the dreams, but he'd want the whole story. If he knew what she and the others had done to find the Nemeton, he'd feel guilty and she can't bear the thought of him looking at her like he's responsible for what she's becoming.

* * *

Deucalion opens the door in a white tank top and soft grey work-out pants, but his eyes are sharp and awake and he gives no indication that she interrupted his sleep, nor any surprise that she showed up at this time at night.

"Can we do some hand-to-hand sparring? I can't sleep, I just need some distraction."

Deucalion doesn't question the lie, but his smile has a sharp edge. "Are you quite sure that's the kind of distraction you came here for in the middle of the night?"

It's not like she hasn't thought about it, about coming up here and letting him strip her bare and press her down with his body as he fucks the last echoes of the dream out of her. But there's a part of her that wants to punish herself for her dream self's behavior, a part that craves pain and violence, and she's reluctant to get those things mixed up.

"Not tonight," she says firmly, and he shrugs.

"Suit yourself."

Going hand-to-hand against him is as ineffective as it was five months ago when they started out, but by now she knows better than to throw everything into the first attack, remembering his advice to stall for time. She ducks and evades and tries to slow him down as much as she can until she gets too tired, the strain of the fighting and the lack of sleep taking their toll, and her defense becomes sloppy.

He knocks her down with less force than he'd normally use, and she doesn't bother getting up again, rolling on her back and staring at the ceiling until she starts seeing imaginary patterns on the white.

Deucalion stands over her. "Are you ready to talk now?"

The words spill from her mouth easily, and she lets them, tired of trying to hold it all inside, piling up all her anxiety and her fears because she's scared of what would happen if she let anyone know. She's been doing that for so long now, and it hasn't made it better, so what does she have to lose?

"Deaton said it would change us. The surrogate sacrifice." When Deucalion is frowning at her, she realizes that Scott probably never told him what they did the night of the lunar eclipse before Scott went out to meet Deucalion. She gives him a quick rundown of what happened, watching his frown deepen, confusion replaced by disapproval.

"He said it would always be there, like a darkness around our hearts. And he was right. I can feel it. And I'm scared of it, every day, that it might just... take over. That the darkness becomes me, and turns me into someone like Gerard or Kate and I won't be able to do anything about it."

Deucalion's lip curls in distaste. "Good old Alan. He never changes. Never short of a helpful piece of advice. Except of course, it rarely ever helps anyone because he's so cryptic about it and you don't figure out what he means until it's too late."

"Don't," she says sharply. "He was helping us when we needed him, while you and your pack were out there terrorizing Derek and Scott and Scott's mum and killing Erica and Boyd and toying with Lydia and Danny. He might be a little vague, but you don't get to pass judgment on him."

He pulls back. As long as she's been coming to him, neither of them have mentioned that it wasn't all that long ago that they were enemies, an unspoken rule she has now broken. For a moment, she thinks that she may have gone too far, and she bites her tongue to force herself not to try and apologize. He doesn't deserve an apology, not over this, not when she meant every word she said.

His tone is considerably colder than before. "Very well. You're right, of course. Just keep in mind that I never pretended to be anything but what I am. I never claimed to be the good guy. Unlike your friend Dr. Deaton."

"He's not my friend," she snaps. "I don't even like him all that much."

The vehemence of her protest seems to surprise him. It surprises her, too. She has no particularly strong feelings for Deaton one way or the other. In a backwards way, what she's trying to say is that sure, maybe she was defending Deaton just now. Maybe she hasn't forgiven and will never quite forgive Deucalion for his actions when he and his pack came into town. But at the end of the day, she's still here with him now; it's him she's been coming to for help all this time, not Deaton, not Scott, not anyone else.

Perhaps Deucalion hears what she doesn't say, because his expression softens. "I'm sure he meant well. What I meant to say was, he was being very vague about that darkness that dangerous little experiment of his supposedly left in you and I don't think it's necessarily what you think it is."

"I can feel it, though. It makes me want to–" Her voice breaks. "You don't know the kind of things it makes me want to do sometimes," she whispers, as if saying it louder would make it more real.

He reaches out to take her right hand, and she lets him even though part of her wants to pull back and refuse the comfort. Their fingers enlace, and suddenly, his claws come out, sharp against the back of her hand, almost but not quite breaking the skin. When she tries to pull away, the pressure increases, little drops of blood seeping to the surface. She looks up and meets his red-eyed stare, and realizes it's not about comfort at all.

"What kinds of things? Kill me? Kill Scott? Kill them all? Slash their throats and rip out their hearts and bathe in their blood until all you see is red and you're the last one standing?" He tightens his hold a little more until the pain makes her wince. "You think I don't know what that feels like? You think I don't feel it?"

He lets go and she pulls her hand away, five neat little wounds on the back. Rubbing her left palm against it, she wipes the blood off and winces at the sting.

"It's what loss does to people. When something precious is taken from you and you want to lash out at the world because there is no way of getting it back. I hate to break it to you, Allison, but that has nothing to do with whatever darkness Alan says the sacrifice left inside of you."

"If that's not it, then what?"

"I wouldn't know." He shrugs. "I'd tell you to ask Alan, if I thought there was any hope of getting a straight answer out of that man. If I had to harbor a guess, I'd say what it does is feed your fears of turning into a killer, your self-doubts, the way you keep second-guessing yourself. Or perhaps the self-destructive streak that makes you seek out the company of a man who, as you've just so fittingly mentioned, was terrorizing your friends not too long ago."

Despite his glib tone, she knows he's serious. While she's willing to consider the merit of his first suggestion – that perhaps her dreams are not so much premonitions about the person she's becoming as they are manifestations of her self-doubts – she knows that he's off about the latter. If anything, he's been the only one who's been able to keep her darkness at bay. It's part of why she came to him in the first place; why she keeps coming back.

She doesn't tell him that. His earlier statement about not claiming to be anything but the villain still echoes in her mind, and she doesn't think he's ready to hear her admit that coming to him is quite possibly the furthest from self-destruction she's been in a long time.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, telling her friends is much harder than telling Deucalion was, the expectations of friendship weighting her down because she knows she should have come to them first, months ago. It seems too little, too late now, but it's all she can offer.

Seated at the McCall's kitchen table with everyone gathered around her, she can't even look Isaac in the face when she describes her dreams.

"Deucalion says –"

"Wait a moment," Stiles interrupts her. "_Deucalion?_ As in 'Death, Destroyer of Worlds, Demon Wolf' Deucalion? That Deucalion? Since when are you discussing things with him before you even tell your friends? That is us, FYI. Actually, no, since when are you talking to him at all? It's bad enough that Scott and Derek didn't kill him when they could, now you're what - sitting together over a cup of tea, sharing funny little anecdotes about the Nemeton?" He's worked himself up to a full-blown rage, his tone rising and his hands flailing in a way Allison is sure is meant to be reproachful.

She winces and admits, "I've been training with him."

All eyes at the table are on her, and Stiles gapes at her. "You've been– "

Before he can return to his rant, Scott quietly cuts him off. "Do you trust him?" There's no accusation in the question, not in the way he's looking at her.

Allison's mind flashes back to the time she spent with Deucalion in the past few months – trading banter about his cooking skills in the elevator, the way he checks her wounds after their fights, the heat he makes flare up inside of her with a single touch, his calm insistence that she's nothing like Gerard and Kate.

"Yeah," she says softly, surprising herself as much as the others, possibly more. "I do."

Scott nods. "That's enough for me."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

She goes after Peter on her own, after he crashes a meeting over territory negotiations with a neighbor pack, undermining Scott's authority in a way that's stupidly reckless at best and dangerously malevolent at worst and almost leaving them with two dozen enemies instead of new allies.

Afterwards, she'll wonder if things would have gone differently if she'd taken Scott or Isaac or her father, but at the time, it seemed like confronting Peter was something she could handle alone.

He brushes off her accusations as if she's being entirely unreasonable and paranoid, but his outrage is so obviously fake that it seems like he doesn't even bother trying to convince her of the innocence of his intentions.

"You wound me. I'm only trying to help."

"If you want–"

Before she can finish the rebuke, he overrides her. "And even if I weren't, what do you think you could possibly do about it? An inexperienced little hunter all on her, thinking she's brave enough to threaten the big bad wolf." He cocks his head and looks her up and down in a way that makes the hair at the back of her neck stand up. "The only way your aunt could harm us was to wait until my family was asleep and then set their house on fire. When it was me against her, face to face, she didn't stand a chance. Remember when I ripped out her throat in front of you? Years and years of experience hunting and killing my kind, and yet she was dead in seconds. Do you really think you'll last longer?"

He sheds his 'harmless Uncle Peter' facade like a second skin he's outgrown, and Allison realizes that this encounter is unlikely to bring them to the tentative agreement she'd hoped they'd be able to reach.

She makes another bid for an amicable solution. "I'm not here to fight."

"You're not? Excellent. Then it will be over even quicker," Peter says, and then he comes charging at her. She reacts instinctively, daggers ready in her hands and spinning around her fingers before she even sees him moving. This is what she's been training for all those months, and just because she didn't want a fight doesn't mean that she's not prepared for it.

Ducking away from him, she manages to slice up his arm from elbow to palm before he knocks one of the daggers out of her hand. Her wrist throbs from the impact of his blow. She grips the second dagger tighter, but before she can make an attack, he jumps at her and she goes down under his weight, breathless and dizzy for a moment when the back of her head hits the ground, the blade dislodged from her fingers.

His face changes right in front of her, becoming feral; eyes electric blue, sharp teeth inches from her throat, ready to tear into her, and the wound in his arm leaves a trail of blood dripping straight across her torso.

"Don't worry, it'll be quick," he tells her. "I'll tell Scott a rogue omega got you and I was just a little too late to stop it. Such a shame, really."

"He's not gonna believe you," she grates out, hand sneaking down between their bodies while he talks.

Peter smiles. It looks grotesque on the wolfed-out face. "I hate to tell you, my dear, but it won't really make a difference in the long run. Not for him, and certainly not for you."

She fires the crossbow from her hip, wolfsbane-laced arrow burying itself in his gut. He roars and staggers backwards, giving her enough room to move, enough to grab the dagger from where it's fallen to the ground and to go for his throat.

His claws lash out, blinding pain exploding in her left shoulder, and when she reels back, he closes in again. She brings the dagger back up before he can react and then there's blood everywhere, all over her, warm and sticky, and Peter collapses into a lump on the ground.

She stares at the fallen body for a moment that stretches too long, narrows down and then speeds up again. He doesn't move. The sea of blood around him is getting bigger and bigger, growing until it reaches her feet, pooling around her boots.

In her dreams, she always looked down at her victim and felt triumph and excitement, the rush of bloodlust. Instead, the sight in front of her makes her sick, her stomach turning at the gaping wound in Peter's throat and the heavy smell of blood in the air. She wants to scream and cry and break down, but she can't, not yet. She remembers watching Derek tear Peter's throat out, in the woods, a year ago. Peter was as dead then as he is now, and he still came back. This time, she'll have to make sure that he'll stay dead.

She chokes back the sob in her throat and goes to get one of Gerard's swords that she knows are still hidden away at the back of their armory.

* * *

Her hands are smeared with blood and dirt when she drives home, staining the steering wheel. Her arms hurt from digging the grave and moving Peter's body, and her injured shoulder throbs with pain, and she can't even think about what she's just done.

She killed someone. Peter was a sociopath who forced the bite on Scott and murdered Kate and half a dozen others he deemed responsible for the Hale fire and he may have plotted to steal Scott's Alpha powers, but it doesn't change the fact that she killed him, with her own hands, and it's only now that she fully understands that there's a world of a difference between injuring someone in a fight and actually taking a life. She thought she was sufficiently prepared and hardened by her experiences over the past year, but the truth is, everything she's done so far – capturing Boyd and Erica, going after Derek and Isaac, helping the pack against the Alphas in the mall – it all seems like child's play compared to this.

Allison knows that she should tell the others. They're not going to blame her, they've all had more than a small taste of what Peter was capable of, at least Scott, Stiles and Lydia. But neither of them will truly understand what it cost her because they've never been in her place. Stiles talks too casually about killing, and Scott thinks it can always be avoided, and Lydia's trauma about her past encounters with Peter will make her blind to the fact that, for Allison, it's not about how justified her actions were but about ending someone's, anyone's, life.

What she wants to do is go home and wash herself until she can't feel Peter's blood on her skin anymore. She wants to burn her clothes and pretend tonight never happened, to go to sleep and wake up with no memories of what Peter's body looked like after she cut him in half. The knowledge that this isn't going to happen, no matter how hard she tries, chokes her like hands around her neck, and she realizes that she can't go home to her father like this, not right now. She can't look him in the eye and tell him what she's done.

She pounds against Deucalion's door until he opens. He takes in her appearance, the blood and dirt all over her clothes and her hands, the tear-stained face, and she doesn't even want to know what he thinks when he sees her like this.

_He thinks you're weak, coming crying to him because you can't handle being a hunter_, a voice inside her snarls. There's another one, quietly, dangerously pleased, telling her, _he finally sees you for the killer that you are_. Allison squeezes her eyes shut as if that could help her to try and drown them out, and she flinches when she suddenly feels his hand at her arm, pulling her inside.

"I killed Peter Hale," she tells him as soon as the door falls shut behind her, because she needs to say it before the words start rotting her from the inside.

Deucalion seems unfazed by her admission.

"Did you, now? And was it anything like in your dreams?" The way he asks makes her think that he already knows the answer.

Her mind flashes back to the moment she saw his body on the ground with all the blood around him, and she shakes her head quietly.

"You're going to be alright," he promises with a faint smile, and she isn't sure how he can know that. She doesn't feel alright. She doesn't feel like she will ever be alright again. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

When she's under the shower, she turns the water so hot that it's almost scalding and she closes her eyes so she won't have to see the rivers of dirty red running into the drain and remember where they came from.

There's a sense of _déjà-vu_ when she steps into the living room with a towel wrapped around her, but it's vague and out of place. That first night when he looked at her, she felt sexy and desirable and powerful. Now her body feels to her like a walking corpse, and rather than lingering on the expanse of naked skin, his eyes are drawn to the wound in her shoulder, four ugly gaping claw marks sluggishly oozing blood.

Deucalion wordlessly pulls her down on the couch and starts cleaning the wound with more care than he ever gave the injuries he left on her when they were sparring. The sting of the disinfectant drives fresh tears into her eyes.

It's going to scar, but maybe that'll be a good thing. It feels right to have a physical reminder of what happened tonight. She looks down at her hands, clean now that the blood and dirt has washed off, nothing remaining that speaks of what she's done. "He was the first person I killed."

"He will hardly be the last." She bristles at the dismissiveness in his tone, and he frowns at her. "Come on, Allison, you don't honestly believe that you can be a hunter and not kill anyone. It doesn't matter how _good_ and _kind_ of a person you think you're supposed to be, you will eventually have to get your hands dirty. Scott has this charmingly noble idea that he can solve every conflict by talking it over, but you and I both know that's highly unrealistic. Eventually, you're going to face a villain you won't be able to placate with words, and you will have to be the one who has to deal with them."

The way he talks about Scott irks her, grating on her nerves and adding to the throbbing pain that's shooting from her shoulder up into her temples. "If Scott had thought like that, you'd be dead – so I wouldn't be so quick to knock Scott's pacifist attitude if I were you."

For a long moment he doesn't answer, busying himself with patching up her wound, and she thinks he's mulling over her words until he finally speaks. "Are you really so naïve to think that it was Scott's little warning that made me reconsider my plans? That when I chose to stay in town, it wasn't because I was biding my time to wait and see when the opportunity would present itself to make a bid for power and make your merry little band of misfits submit to me?"

Her heart stutters and she freezes. In a flash, she can see it all play out in front of her eyes: Deucalion turning on them, the twins falling back in line next to him, Isaac dying as he defends Scott, Scott's guilt, the way it all comes down to her and Deucalion facing each other for real, ready to tear each other apart. She doesn't want that, and she refuses to believe that he wants it.

"You had all the time in the world, and you haven't tried anything yet," she says with more conviction than she feels.

"No, but that had nothing to do with Scott and his ridiculous idealism."

His hand comes to rest on her shoulder, inches from the dressing he put on the wound, and her skin starts tingling, the pain instantly dissolving. When she looks down at his arm, she sees his veins turning black.

She's so distracted that it takes a moment until the meaning of his words has sunk in.

"Oh." It's kind of enormous, and unexpected, and she doesn't quite know what to say to that, so she kisses him. Her lips brush softly against his until his mouth opens under hers and he takes control, cradling her face in his hands and turning the mild touch into something hungry and desperate and animalistic, like he's angry with her for foiling his plans and making him want to be more than just the villain of the story.

He pulls her into his lap and continues plundering her mouth, and she happily lets him. She's too worn out and exhausted – physically, mentally and emotionally – to do anything more than making out tonight, but the way he holds her with large, warm hands resting firmly against her waist and the ferocity with which his lips claim hers are anchoring her. It's not quite enough to make her forget what happened tonight, but if what he said was true, if he's willing to turn a new leaf for her, then maybe she can believe him that she can be a hunter without being like Kate or Gerard.

Maybe killing someone doesn't necessarily make her a killer.

She falls asleep curled up against him, and for the first time since she drowned to save her dad, she doesn't dream.

The End.

* * *

That's it! Thanks for sticking with this story until the end, guys. Comments are always very much appreciated.


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